“But, Karl Ove,” Dad said behind me. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t get so upset. Is it that much fun with Grandma and Grandad?”
“Yes!” I shouted into the pillow. My whole body was contorted in convulsive sobs.
“But if they don’t want to see your own mother. It’s not much fun seeing them then, is it? Surely you understand, don’t you? They don’t want to see us.”
“Why should she change her name?” I shouted.
“It’s her real name,” Dad said. “It’s what she wants. And neither you nor I nor Grandma nor Grandad can deny her that right. Can we?”
He placed his hand on my shoulder for a fleeting moment. Then he stood up and left the room.
When the tears had dried up I picked up the book Mom had bought me and carried on reading. At the back of my mind I was aware that Yngve had gone to bed, that the sliding door was closed, that they were playing music in the living room, but without a scrap of it sticking. From the first sentence I plunged headlong into the story and fell deeper and deeper. The main character was Ged, a boy who lived on an island and had special gifts, and when this was discovered he was sent to a school for wizards. There it came out that his gifts were extra-special, and once when he had to perform for the others, in an act of excessive arrogance, he opened the door to the other world, the underworld, the kingdom of death, and a shadow stole out. Ged was dying, he was weak, with failing powers, for many years afterward, marked for life, and the shadow pursued him. He fled from it, hid in some obscure place somewhere in the world, abandoned all his ambitions knowing that what he had done, the simple wizardry tricks, was just empty gestures and pretense, that there was another, a more profound kind of magic woven into all existence, and it was to maintain the balance here that was a wizard’s real responsibility. All objects and all creatures had names corresponding to their essence, and only by knowing the objects’ and creatures’ real names could they be controlled. Ged could do that, but he didn’t reveal that he could, because every spell, every act of wizardry, affected the balance, something else could happen somewhere else, which could not be foreseen. The villagers where he had settled thought therefore that he was a poor wizard; after all he wouldn’t perform even the simplest tricks with which every village wizard plied his trade. He was young, serious, there was a large scar across his face, he was sensitive to cold, but when the chips were down, when he really had to use his gifts, he did. Once there was a child dying. He followed it into the kingdom of death and brought it back, even though he shouldn’t have, even though it was dangerous, for if there was one balance that should not be upset, it was that between life and death. But he did it and almost died in the process. The villagers saw for the first time who he was. And the shadow that he had released from beyond, who all this time had been flitting around the world after him, saw him, because whenever he used his powers, it noticed and came closer. He had to leave. And he did, in a boat on the sea between islands to the furthest shore. The shadow came closer and closer. After several confrontations, with Ged near to death, came the final showdown. All the while he had been trying to find the name of the shadow. He had scoured reference works about creatures from the oldest times, asked other, more intelligent wizards, but in vain, the creature was unknown, nameless. Then he knew. On the sea, alone in a boat, with the shadow getting closer and closer, he knew. The shadow was called Ged. The shadow had his name. The shadow was himself.
When I turned off the light, after reading the last page, it was nearly twelve o’clock and my eyes were full of tears.
He was the shadow!
At least once, often twice, a week during that autumn and winter I was on my own in the house. Dad was at meetings, Yngve was at rehearsals with the school band or training with the volleyball or soccer teams, or at his friends’ houses. I liked being at home on my own, it was a wonderful feeling not to have someone telling me what to do, yet I didn’t like it that much either because the nights were drawing in and the reflection from the windows, of my figure wandering around, was extremely unpleasant to see, it smacked of death and the dead.
I knew this was not how it was, but what good did this knowledge do?
It was especially spooky when I was engrossed in what I was reading because it was as if I wasn’t attached anywhere when I lifted my head from my page and got up. All alone, that was the feeling I had, I was absolutely alone, isolated by the darkness that rose like a wall outside.
Oh, I could always run the bath if I had enough time before Dad returned, he didn’t like me having a bath at all hours, once a week he felt was enough and he kept a beady eye on this, like everything else I did. But if I took a liberty now and ran the bath, got in, switched on my cassette recorder, and let the hot water wash over my body, I could see myself from the outside, my mouth agape, as it were, as though my head were a skull. I sang, the voice rebounded, I submerged my head and was terrified: I couldn’t see anything! Someone could sneak up on me! Was anyone there? The two, three, four seconds I had been underwater represented a hole in time, and someone might have snuck in through that hole. Perhaps not into the bathroom, no, there was no one there, but they could have snuck into the house.
The best I could do in this situation was to switch off the kitchen light, or my bedroom light, and look out because outside, when there was no reflection from the windows, there were the other houses, there were the other families, and sometimes the other children, too. Nothing made you feel more secure than that.
On one such evening I was kneeling on a kitchen stool in the darkness and staring out, it was snowing and a gale was blowing. The wind was howling across the landscape, rushing down the chimney, and the roof gutters were rattling. It was pitch black outside, under the yellow glow from the street lamps, there wasn’t a soul, only gusting snow.
A car drove up. It turned into Nordåsen Ringvei, coming toward our house. Was it coming here?
It was. It came into our drive and parked.
Who could it be?
I ran out of the kitchen, down the stairs, and onto the porch.
There I stopped.
Surely no one was coming to visit us?
Who could it be?
I was frightened.
Went to the door and pressed my nose against the wavy glass. I didn’t need to open the door; I could stand there and see if I recognized the late-night visitor.
The car door opened and a figure fell out!
The figure was moving on all fours!
Oh no! Oh no!
Swaying from side to side like a bear, it came toward me. It stopped by the bell and rose onto two legs!
I backed away.
What sort of creature was this?
Ding dong, the bell went.
The figure dropped to all fours again.
The abominable snowman? Lightfoot?
But here? In Tybakken?
The figure raised itself again, rang the bell, and fell back onto all fours.
My heart was pounding.
But then it hit me.
Oh, of course.
It was the local councilman, the one who was paralyzed.
It had to be.
The abominable snowman didn’t drive a car.
I opened the door as the figure was starting to crawl away. It turned.
It was him.
“Hello,” he said. “Is your father at home?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “He’s at a meeting.”
The man, who had a beard and glasses and a bit of saliva at the corners of his mouth, and who often drove around with young people in his custom-designed car, sighed.